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Tuesday, March 10, 2015

How do you cure the Monday blues? Here's how I do it. I make a card and submit it to the challenge hosted by my friend Taheerah called Cure for the Monday Blues.

Here is the card I made. I love this color palette. Yellow is my absolute favorite color and I really love how well the grey complements it.

Here is the inspiration photo:

Not only was I inspired by the colors, but I also drew from the bold stripes, polka dots, and the sign with the grey and yellow lettering. Often when I am creating, I have a general idea of the colors, images and sentiments I want to use, but I sometimes get stuck on the layout. That's why it's handy to have a Pinterest board of card sketches. I go to my board, look at the sketches, and choose one that I think will work with the other elements I plan to use. Here is the sketch I used for today's card, courtesy of Studio Calico.

I chose to use the Valentino dress worn by Keira Knightly as my inspiration (See photo below the card.) Not only is it beautiful, but it has so much texture. To make my Valentino-inspired creation, I used a lot of techniques. In fact, this is a very technique-y card.

The entire card uses Lacy Scrolls from Altenew, except for the sentiment, which is from the Painted Poppy set. I first stamped the green vine images onto beige cardstock. Then, I overlayed vellum on top of it, and stamped the scrolls in Versamark and heat embossed in silver. Then I stamped the sentiment and heat embossed it in black and stitched the vellum onto the cardstock. The final step involved stamping the flowers and leaves, adding depth with Prismacolor Pencils, and fussy cutting them before gluing them onto the vellum.

Although it was a lot of work and used a lot of techniques (stamping,
embossing on vellum, stitching, coloring, fussy cutting), I think it
really captures the texture of the dress.

Wednesday, March 4, 2015

Have you heard of MISTI? If you're an avid stamper, you may want to get to know her because this handy tool is changing the way stamping is done. I just got mine today and had to play with it!

There is no way I could have made this card and get the repetitive stamping perfectly aligned without the MISTI. Here is an introductory tutorial. Though I've only used it once, I feel certain I am going to love this tool!

I also used another new item; the Level Up stamp set from My Favorite Things. My kids and all their friends love video games so I HAD to get this set to make birthday cards. I've had the idea in my head to repetitively stamp LEVEL UP. However, to do it, I had to actually cut the stamp. It is totally okay to cut your stamps. They don't bleed, they don't scream and you can get way more use out of them. You can also put them back the way they were. That being said, I still cringe every time I do it. LOL!

The bottom half of the stamp (Happy Birthday) was stamped on vellum and heat embossed. I'm really happy with the result. Thank you, MISTI!!

Sunday, March 1, 2015

Hi everyone. I'm back with more Paper Sweeties inspiration as an alumni designer, which means I get to participate in the challenge blog hops. Yay!

This month's inspiration is called Waiting for Spring and it couldn't be more appropriate. The weather here in Ohio has been pretty harsh the last two winters with sub zero temperatures. I can't wait for spring!

About Me

I am a devoted Christian and SAHM to two great kids. In my previous life, I did public relations for 10 years. Then I got married and became a mom. That was it. I wanted to be with my kids. I am so blessed to also have an awesome DH, too!
My interest in cards began in 2003 when my husband and I received a beautiful handmade wedding card. It felt so great to receive something custom made. I hope my cards bless others in the same way that wedding card blessed me and my husband. Enjoy!